Emerging 4G mobile networks including Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) will offer widespread wireless broadband access opening many new opportunities for unique social networking and location-based services. However, new applications may require additional bandwidth beyond the capabilities of a single subscriber's 3G, 4G, or even Wireless Fidelity (WiFi)-to-wireless wide area network (WAN) connection. However, present solutions do not offer efficient and/or reliable means to accomplish this bandwidth sharing.
Inverse multiplexing is the reciprocal of a traditional multiplexer/de-multiplexer combination where many smaller sessions or circuits share a common and much larger bandwidth session or circuit. An inverse multiplexer allows a larger session or circuit to be transported over several smaller sessions or circuits and then recombine the smaller sessions to the original larger session at the inverse multiplexing termination. Inverse multiplexing has been used primarily in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) transport where telephone companies wish to share existing parallel T1 circuits (1.544 Mb/s each) in a common multi-pair cable to save cost versus replacing the cable with fiber for higher bandwidth sessions than 1.544 Mb/s.
FIG. 6 is a basic diagram from Xilinx White Paper #107, published on Jan. 11, 2000, and shows a simplified high bandwidth flow of ATM cells transported over multiple physical layer links. The above-described inverse multiplexing implementation is fully defined in the following ATM Forum and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standards documents: AF-PHY-0086.001, Inverse Multiplexing for ATM (IMA) Specification, Ver. 1.1, April 1999, and ITU-T I.761 Inverse multiplexing for ATM (IMA), which are incorporated herein by reference.
Moreover, scalable video coding was recently implemented within the MPEG-4/Part-10 and H.264 standards bodies. Scalable video coding allows for efficient one time compression of video content suitable for multiple quality levels of playback requiring the given client device to only receive the needed bandwidth for the playback client. This is accomplished by generating multiple layers during the video compression process. A basic diagram showing how enhancement layers are provided to a base layer in H.264 scalable video coding is shown in FIG. 7.
A base layer (or stream) provides minimum bandwidth support for playback (i.e., the lowest quality level, frame rate, and resolution) needed by any client. Clients with higher level playback capabilities may select to receive one or more enhancement layers increasing quality, frame rate, and/or resolution. A more complete description of H.264 scalable video coding can be found in the following white paper: “Overview of the H.264/AVC Video Coding Standard,” Thomas Wiegand, Gary J. Sullivan, Senior Member, IEEE, Gisle Bjøintegaard, and Ajay Luthra, Senior Member, IEEE paper, which is incorporate herein by reference.
Scalable video coding and inverse multiplexing per se are both understood in the related art as independent technologies solving their own unique problem sets. However, there has been no understanding of how to integrate these concepts together to provide higher quality video delivery to co-located client devices utilizing independent carrier networks.